It seems like a good a idea. Having patients fill out reams of paperwork in the waiting room would give the doctor more information about their problems. Intuitively, it would also save some time later instead of making the physician or his/her assistants ask those same questions. Unfortunately, not all ideas turn out to work well in the real world. Forget the fact that JCAHO (if you are associated with a hospital) keeps adding more and more stuff to ask patients which gives them more and more paperwork to fill out. Remember, JCAHO doesn't need to study whether these kind of burdens are helpful; they get paid to create more work for doctors and hospitals to do so they can "oversee them". Sorry, got off on a tangent there. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Forget the fact that any little written piece of information in a multi-page questionnaire can be used against the doctor in a lawsuit. The doctor may not have the time to scour over the whole thing but lawyers get paid by the hour and they scour the whole thing over and over again.
No, the best part about these forms and questionnaires is that a recent study shows that:- 16% understood all the questions
- 38% comprehended at least half
- 18% could handle fewer than half
- 28% misunderstood all of the questions
- 68% were bad with numbers
Call me crazy but it seems that these forms may be a waste of paper and letting the doctor have more face to face time and letting he or she ask targeted and appropriate questions is probably the best way to help patients. That's the way medicine was supposed to be anyway.
It seems like a good a idea. Having patients fill out reams of paperwork in the waiting room would give the doctor more information about their problems. Intuitively, it would also save some time later instead of making the physician or his/her assistants ask those same questions. Unfortunately, not all ideas turn out to work well in the real world. Forget the fact that JCAHO (if you are associated with a hospital) keeps adding more and more stuff to ask patients which gives them more and more paperwork to fill out. Remember, JCAHO doesn't need to study whether these kind of burdens are helpful; they get paid to create more work for doctors and hospitals to do so they can "oversee them". Sorry, got off on a tangent there. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Forget the fact that any little written piece of information in a multi-page questionnaire can be used against the doctor in a lawsuit. The doctor may not have the time to scour over the whole thing but lawyers get paid by the hour and they scour the whole thing over and over again. No, the best part about these forms and questionnaires is that a recent study shows that:
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